Orphanage Christmas Party

Here it is.... After a long lull in our blogging chain, we finally have a new post to share! Last Saturday was the Gunsan Children's Home/Panton Christmas Party. It was, thank goodness, a megahit and there are no longer piles and piles of gifts lying strewn all over the chosen dorm room. Those gifts are now in the hands of 75 very happy children. I hope this will be a Christmas they remember for the rest of their lives. Enjoy the pictures... :)

Below is our first group wrapping night. As you can see, we took over one of the dorm rooms so we could have as much freedom as possible being messy and somehow organized all at the same time. This is only one of the 3 rooms in the "apartment" covered in gifts. So multiply this times 3 to get the bigger picture.



Just another shot of all the madness...



Here's Andy working hard to wrap gifts for the orphans. :) We stayed up til 1 the night before making sure everything was as perfect as possible.



Andy and Majik very focused on the task at hand...



All these guys in their Friday shirts (I call them Panton Spirit Shirts) in a mad frenzy to finish wrapping gifts.



And the final product... a huge stack of wrapped presents. They go all the way under the bar in the background. 75 presents plus 20 teachers' gifts. Wow.



Coolio doing a FOD check under the bus. Andy's on the other side doing the same thing. A FOD check is when you check for rocks and other debris before going out on the flight line or crossing a runway. It's potentially disastrous for the jets if there's random debris everywhere.



We split the kids into 3 groups and rotated them around 3 stations: the flight line to see a jet, the flight simulator, and the gym for some indoor soccer. Here is our first stop with the youngest group to see one of the jets. Andy's opening up the cockpit.



This is the youngest orphan at the home we visit. He's 3 years old in American years (4 in Korean years) and absolutely precious. All the kids know how to "push it up" (that's the Panton hand sign) - even little Seung-min. Here he is standing under the jet.



Now Andy's climbing up into the jet so the kids can take turns looking around the cockpit.



The first one to brave the ladder up the side of the jet...



Pushing it up! Don't you love the hat? All the children around here have one of those. There are all kinds of different animals to sit on your head and keep your ears warm.



Looking outside the hangar...



Coolio was the quasi-Elf and Andy the Santa Claus. Instead of a sleigh, they had a jet. I laughed out loud every time Coolio helped a kid back down the ladder - it reminded me of A Christmas Story.



Andy's explaining how the different parts of the jet operate. I'm not sure how much they actually understood, but they enjoyed being that close to an airplane (pihaengi in Korean).



Crowding the ladder. :)




Group photo in front of the jet before we head off to the flight sim. I'll recap that part of the day in a new blog so this one doesn't become a mile long. :)